the poll-tax, but who succeeded iu asserting his rights on appeal
(No. 562) ; and a considerable number of documents throwing light on
various taxes to which the inhabitant of Roman Egypt was liable. No
article seems to have been written on any of the Berlin papyri during
the past year, with the exception of that by Wilcken, mentioned above,
and one by Mitteis,7 giving a general account of the texts published up
to date, from the legal point of view.

Along with these publications, which show most strikingly the im-
mense amount of new material that Las been extracted from the soil of
Egypt during the last few years and is now distributed among the
Museums of Europe, special mention is due to the one attempt that
has been made to work up these materials into living and continuous
history. This is Prof. Mahaffy's history of the Ptolemies,8 which is the
direct outcome of his work on the Petrie papyi-i. It need hardly be
said that it is a great advance on anything hitherto extant in English
dealing with this period, and although the main outline of the history
may be found in Droysen and Holm, there is no other book in which
the evidence of the new papyri has been brought into conjunction with
the literary evidence previously obtainable. Perhaps it would be too
much to say that even Prof. Mahaffy's skill can make the Ptolemaic
period, with its inextricable tangle of Ptolemies, Arsinoes, Berenices,
and Oleopatras, easily intelligible and interesting; but we may be
grateful to him for a really good piece of work in an obscure and
difficult period, and feel that a gap which has long been vacant has at
last been worthily filled. No one whose interest in Egypt extends
over the Greek, as well as the native Egyptian, period can afford to
neglect this book.

An article by Prof. JSicole9 contains the first public notice of an
interesting group of papyri, consisting of the correspondence of a Roman
officer, Flavius Abinnius or Abinnaeus, who was commander of the
cavalry camp at Dionysias about the years 343-351. Twenty documents
belonging to this group are at Geneva, and thirty-seven in the British
Museum. Two of them are in Latin, one of which contains the official
notification from the Dux Aegypti of Abinnaeus' supersession in his
command. The rest are of very miscellaneous character. They include
petitions for the punishment of various offences of violence against
person or property, showing that he possessed police as well as purely
military powers ; requests for assistance in levying taxes or stopping
smugglers; applications for favours to various individuals; and several
letters relating to his private affairs and money matters. His official